Bet365 boss Denise Coates paid herself another £270.7 million in the year to March 2023, despite the business swinging to a loss as it spent big entering new markets across the Atlantic.
The bumper pay packet - made up of a £220.7 million salary and at least £50 million in dividends - puts Coates among the world’s highest-paid executive for the year. Her earnings are more than 10 times that of any FTSE 100 boss, and top the $253 million (£199 million) made by Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, the top-paid boss on Wall Street. It is less than some top hedge fund bosses, though.
Nine-figure salaries have been the norm for Coates, who has made more than £1.5 billion since 2016. She has also been among the UK’s top taxpayers over that period.
While other bosses accumulate more wealth in a year as the value of the shares they hold grow, few are directly paid upwards of £100 million.
High Pay Centre executive director Luke Hildyard said: “People deserve to be rewarded for innovation and success but there's a question of what's sensible and proportionate. Nobody becomes a multi-billionaire in isolation from wider society. In this case, the wealth depends on money coming out of gamblers' pockets, the efforts of thousands of staff, plus wider factors like people having some disposable income, a secure and reliable internet network or all the infrastructure that goes into staging sports events."
“Ultimately, Britain's prosperity depends on how the wealth our economy generates is shared. Pouring hundreds of millions of pounds more on top of billionaire fortunes every year isn't a good way to maximise living standards and it over-values the contribution that the super-rich have made.”
It comes as Bet365’s revenue grew to £3.39 billion. Sports betting still made up the vast majority of that total, at £2.65 billion, but online casino games continued to be a bigger part of revenue, growing to around £715 million.
As in prior years, the business opted against a geographic breakdown of revenue, arguing it would be “severely prejudicial to the interests of the group”. Bet365 has faced questions from MPs over how much of its profits come from China, where online gambling is prohibited.
Analysts at Regulus Partners said the figures suggested Bet365 likely grew in the UK, even as its main rivals’ revenue stagnated or declined.
But expenses soared, which the group said was mostly due to the cost of entering new markets. The firm launched in a number of American states, as well as Ontario in Canada, during the year, having sat on the sidelines in the initial flurry after states started legalising betting in 2018. Rivals have spent billions trying to crack the US market, loading the airwaves with ads.
“Entering into new markets requires high initial investment, however the directors remain confident that these markets will deliver a significant contribution to the group in future periods,” Bet365 said.
Those costs meant the group, which also owns Stoke City Football Club, made a £69.4 million loss, after a £33.1 million profit a year earlier. That profit was down from prior years, where the business had made hundreds of millions.
Gambling in the UK is set to undergo a series of major reforms, including the introduction of ‘affordability checks’ that will require betting firms to perform checks on customers who deposit more than £125 in a month.
Bet365 said: “The group welcomes all proposals set out by the Government.”
It said it had already “taken steps to ensure a workable solution around financial risk checks”.
